Sadly yes...

Hey,

I use my empeg at parties all the time.

People have even asked me to take it along (only reason I get asked ) to their parties....

I just hope this isn't true. I'm soooo scared of the RIAA. (especially since I live in the UK).

Cheers,

Pul

Paul Haigh, 6GB, Blue
Reg: 4120 - Serial 00254

I used mine at our wedding too. I created a 5 second blank mp3 file to put between each track so that my brother (who was controlling the empeg during the service) had a fighting chance of not playing the next bit of music too soon.

We walked down the aisle (together) to Cher singing the Shoop-shoop song, don't ask (it was great fun though).

__
Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

Okay, here's something I'd always said the Empeg would be good for, now I've actually done it myself and I was right.

I've recently gotten into desktop audio production. Using Emagic's Logic Audio (an awesome piece of software by the way), I'm mixing down and producing live multitrack recordings of myself and some of my friends.

(Note that I'm using the word "Mix" here in its original context: combining multiple tracks of acoustically-recorded audio of singers and instruments playing an original song. Not the newer definition of "Mix", i.e., not the recombining and beat-matching of preexisting material.)

After the final mixdown of a piece of music, you need to preview it on different pieces of consumer audio equipment to make sure it sounds good. Because even if you use the best set of monitors when you mix down, you should still listen to your mixes on various reference equipment to hear how it'll sound in the real world.

Two nights ago, I mixed down a set of songs which I thought were perfect. Then I MP3'd them at high quality, squirted them into the Empeg, and listened to them in my car, no CD-burning needed. I can also take the Empeg to any stereo with line inputs and preview my mixes. I'm glad I previewed these mixes in the car, because there was some subsonic stuff happening in the mix which I didn't notice until the car's subwoofer kicked in. So I was able to fix the anomolies before wasting any actual CD-R media.

For my purposes, just being able to MP3 my mixes is fine. But for some people, they'd need raw .WAV support in the Empeg if they wanted to do this seriously. So that's one good reason to fix the .WAV support in the Empeg...

___________
Tony Fabris

Funnelweb.

'nuff said.

___________
Tony Fabris

Funnelweb.

http://empeg.comms.net/cgi-bin/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=empeg_general&Number=2346&page=2&view=collapsed&sb=5&vc=1#Post2346

;)

(O|||||O)

Wanna know one of the coolest things about the Empeg? On the Empeg discussion BBS, the Wish List forum has about 800 more posts than the Bug Reports forum. That's a very good thing! It means people are spending more time suggesting improvements than they are reporting things that don't work. Something of an "approval rating" for the Empeg. Just a random thought..

...Looking through the Crutchfield catalog and knowing that your car stereo is cooler than every single one of the stereos they sell.

___________
Tony Fabris

Stopping by your local stereo store to pick up an RCA cable and having the guy say "Whoa! What kind of stereo is that?

Seeing Tux everytime you turn it on.

-Trevor

-----
Mk 2, Green 12GB 080000349

Hi,

There is only one thing better than owning an empeg, owning two


_________________________________________
John, (MK1 114-20G, MK2 15-36G).

I love the way drunken mates just can't help turning the lights off in my house and staring at the visuals.... ;)

-------------
Empeg MK II Owner SN: 118
(Owner of too Many Toys, and a large Debt)

Having a cop who pulls you over for an expired registration (which isn't really expired) ask what all those flashy lights were that were coming from the car before he pulled me over.

||| loren.cox
||| 080000446
||| 12GB blue

Last week, I took a long trip with the empeg. During one leg of the trip, I needed to drive alone late at night while I was very tired.

On this leg of the trip, I made an interesting discovery: My "low key" playlist of mostly quiet music keeps me awake better than loud music. The empeg's playlist features allowed me to make this (arguably important) discovery.

___________
Tony Fabris

Having your boss turn all colors because he didn't register in the queue like I told him so and now has to watch me drive the same company car he has (Cars in Holland cost 20 percent more then the they do in Belgium, he is Dutch and can just barely get a BMW 320d in his salary grade, I am 2 grades lower then he is but live in Belgium and can get the same car as him because it is cheaper in Belgium) except now mine has an empeg.

He never expected it to be THIS cool see ...

Why don't these guys ever listen to me, I always am proven right in the end.

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

When I'm tired loud music tends to start droning to me. I no longer listen and it becomes a white noise, which is trouble.

reg#15786-red

Another thing:

Knowing that no matter where I take my Jeep, or what I drive over that the music will never skip

Looking like a zombie at work because you didn't get any sleep and all because you spent all night trying to catch up on all the new messages on the unofficial empeg BBS but each time you thought you had read them all you did a reload of the main index only to find 10 more new messages entered for you to read.

Pardon my grammar, it is late (reason, see above)

Hans

Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

Having your girlfriend who initially couldn't fathom why you payed so much for a stereo... actually use it, and now cutely call it hers and not want to give the remote back when we're in the car. She figured out the interface and remote buttons with no help from me whatsoever! Lucky for me we have the exact same taste in music, so now she's the dedicated playlist programmer =].


|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

i completely agree. when i first got my empeg back in august, it was a huge waste of money. no reason to hve that much music. first she wishes i remembered to bring it on the honeymoon, now she wants one for her car.

as for a playlist programmer, i am in the same boat. whenever my wife is in the car, she basically takes over the empeg operation. not so good for me though. we like alot of the same stuff, but she hates stuff like the misfits and slayer. she has pretty much managed to grasp the entire interface though.

go figure.

jeremy

12 gig, green...

she has pretty much managed to grasp the entire interface though.

Hmm.
Time to add the Wendy Filter an have it include an 'interface randomiser', making it nearly inoperable.

Murray 06000047
____________________

Seredipity in the shuffle.

Occasionally, when doing shuffle-play on the whole unit, the Empeg will choose a couple of tracks to play next to each other that happen to go together particularly well.

For example, I hadn't heard any of the songs from Alex Lifeson's solo album in a while, and the player just now sandwiched one of those Lifeson tracks between two tracks from Geddy Lee's solo album.

(For the uninitiated, those are two members of Rush, who, as a band, have been on extended hiatus since 1996 because their drummer had some personal tragedies he needed to recover from. Good news is that they will get back together and begin writing a new Rush album in the next few months.)

___________
Tony Fabris

LIstenning to The Hunt For Red October in the dark with Star Dust visual. Imagine those aren't stars, but bubbles and dust under the ocean.... Yeah, I've got an overactive imagination. But it's trippy.
Also, I work at Intel. People here get a weird look when I tell them my car stereo runs and Intel processor. : ) 'Doesn't yours?'

I don't know if anybody has noticed but the key press delays and popup window disappear times are really good.
I have a CD player in my dash too and to turn the thing off (after radio or CD) I have to hold a button in for 3 seconds. I know that it wasn't designed to be a secondary unit but 3 seconds is a *really* long time on the road! it seems like an eternity before it turns off.
Empeg got the button delays pretty well spot on. Just adds to the great UI.

____________________
Murray 06000047

I don't know if anybody has noticed but the key press delays and popup window disappear times are really good.

I agree with this for 99 percent of the stuff, they've done a great job. There's one delay time that I think is too long, but one of the features in 1.1 will take care of that complaint for me.

You see... when a new song starts playing when I'm in full-screen-visual mode, sometimes I like to press and hold the bottom button so I can glance at the song title. But the message at the top of the screen that says "Info:Track" covers up the song title and hangs around too long. (I know I can turn off the message completely, but I don't want to lose the visual-names-when-switching feature to do it.) Anyway, since 1.1 will have a "flash track info at the start of a new song" feature, I won't have any more reason to complain because the player will do this for me automatically without covering up the song title.

___________
Tony Fabris

YES! ... I've had that exact thought too!!

-CHiP

but one of the features in 1.1 will take care of that complaint for me.

Cool isn't it? we know about the feature to some extent _before_ it comes out.

____________________
Murray 06000047

Bumping this thread to the top, just so the new blood can see it.

Don't have anything to add to it right now, anyone else have anything along these lines?

After having my unit in the car for a while I finally got rid of my home stereo and got a nice big amp setup for my empeg. Up until then, my son (currently 18 months old) could only work power on/off and volume (usually volume UP!!) but now he's able to skip tune or go back to start of tune if he really likes one. Okay, he doesn't change playlists often - only down, down, down - which is good.


I guess my point is - superb user interface! So simple even a toddler can use it. Although admittedly he is a bit of a techie - has his own PC and laptop and walkman. Guess he takes after his dad.



And obviously the visuals can silence a grouchy child in seconds!


Frog51

And obviously the visuals can silence a grouchy child in seconds!

Okay, now that is cool.